The Visit Home
by Erpel
Summary: Shelley decides to suprise Edgar with a visit to his old cave. But there they find that something is quite different...


_(A/N: Hello everyone! This is my very first fic, and I'm really excited to share it with you guys! (That is, the five people who share my love for the trainwreck of a musical.)_ _This story will be a mix of fluff with a bit of angst._ _English isn't my first language, so my apologies in advance. But feel free point out any mistakes, so I can learn from them. Without further ado, let's get started!)_

"Shelley, can you at least tell me where we're going?" Edgar sat up and looked at Shelley, who was struggling to keep the car on the road. "Keep your head down, you'll be seen!" Edgar reluctantly obeyed and lay across the back seat again. The seat belts were really uncomfortable in his side, but Shelley had insisted he might be seen otherwise, and that would be a problem. He murmured: "I thought you guys weren't nocturnal..." Shelley half-turned to face him. "True, but better safe than sorry. Also, I don't want you finding out the supr. Shoot!" Suddenly, The car began to shake a though it was going through an earthquake. It had suddenly turned into a roller coaster, and Edgar was certain the wheels were going to give out. Shelley cursed softly under her breath, but managed with some trouble to get the car stable again. Edgar rubbed his head, which had hit the back of Shelley's seat hard. "Cheese and crackers, Shelley! Where did you get your license?" No answer. "Shel?" Shelley just looked straight ahead at the dark road. "... You do have your license, right?" The driver rubbed her neck. "Weeeellll, technically..." Edgar didn't even let her finish her excuse, but simply covered his face in his hands. "We're going to die." "Now, don't be so dramatic, I've had a few lessons already." "Oh, it's not your driving I'm concerned about!" Edgar propped himself up with his elbow. "It's that, when we get home..." The car hit a bump in the road, and Edgar nearly hit his head again. "...IF we get home, and your parents find out what we've done? We're dead." Shelley couldn't help but secretly agree. She had snuck out before, and her parents had caught her a few times. It had not been pretty. But she still tried to comfort the anxious Edgar. "Look, they'll be on that party for, like, a few hours. That's plenty of time. And if they do come home sooner, they'll be too drunk to notice we're even gone." "But, if misses Parker." "What 'misses Parker' doesn't know, can't hurt her. Now keep your head down." They drove the rest of the way in silence. Finally, Shelley parked the car and helped Edgar get out. He was extremely grateful to stand on solid ground again. He had tried not to show it, but he really, really didn't like cars. Moving while, at the same time, not moving was something he just couldn't wrap his head around. He and Shelley stood next to the car. She was holding a flashlight, but he could see just fine. They were standing on a deserted dirt road in the forest. Is this what Shelley had been so keen on showing him? She had a big smile on her face, with a little mischievous flame in her eye. He loved that look, but it also made him nervous. It was the face she pulled before a prank. She asked: "Do you know where we are?" He looked around some more. "We are...in a forest." "Do you know what forest?" Edgar felt like he was missing something. He started to look for what Shelley might have wanted to show him. Trees, leaves, some more trees, a cave, trees... A cave. His gaze rested on the rocky formation. He had never seen his cave from the outside before, so he wasn't sure if it was the cave. But why would Shelley bring him to a random one? He pointed at it and turned to Shelley, whose flame in her eye had grown to a forest fire. "Is that..." She nodded so enthusiastically, it was more like she vibrated. Edgar's mouth was now so agape, it resembled the entrance of the cave. "No way!" Shelley began jumping up and down. "Yeah way!" She opened the trunk of the car and began gathering climbing gear, which she had 'borrowed' from Rich. He wouldn't miss it. Hopefully. "I thought, you are always learning about my home and stuff, and basically taking a crash course in being human, but I know almost nothing about your home!" She grabbed the cables and held them up. "So, I thought, you might show me the ropes!" She chuckled at her own pun, but noticed that Edgar was still looking at the cave, as though he feared it might disappear if he looked away. "Edgar? You okay?" He nodded, but didn't turn to face her. "Yes, I'm alright. I just... I can't believe it's still here. I mean, of course it is, why wouldn't it be? I knowed...knew it was, but still. It's so weird to be back." Shelley walked towards him. She had felt so proud for planning this surprise, but now she couldn't help but feel guilty. "Yeah, I can imagine that. Sorry, I shouldn't have dropped you here out of nowhere." She sighed. "I just wanted to surprise you." Edgar snorted. "Well, surprise me, you did!" He turned to her, gently smiling. "It's okay, though. I really appreciate it. Thank you." Suddenly, he frowned. "Are you feeling alright, Shelley?" "Yeah, why?" Edgar pointed at her helmet. "You look a little light-headed." He laughed at his own joke for a moment and then started walking toward the cave. Shelley stood wondering why a boy, who still struggled with irregular verbs, made better puns than she. When she came over the shock that realization brought, she turned on her lantern and followed him, into the cave. Inside, it was dark and creepy, but Edgar didn't seem to mind. In fact, he felt so comfortable, he was taking off his shoes. "What are you doing?" Edgar looked up. "Taking off my shoes." "Yeah, no, I can see that, but why?" He had finished and put his socks neatly in his shoes. "Well, you can't possibly expect me to climb with these! Be glad I'm keeping my shirt on." At the thought of that, Shelley blushed. She wasn't so sure she was. Edgar stood up, not seeming to mind the sharp stones that lay on the ground. He pointed at a sidetrack. "Now, I think we should go that way. Probably." Shelley frowned. "You think, probably? You lived here, and you don't know the way?" Edgar shrugged. "I never came so far up, I lived further down." He peered into the corridor, as though he could see something in the pitch-black. "But I think we'll get there in a few minutes."

"'We'll get there in a few minutes,' he said," Shelley mocked, tugging at the rope, slowly lowering herself down a steep descent. "" it will be an easy climb," he said." Edgar climbed next to her, not needing rope or gear to navigate the harsh rocks. Shelley knew he was going way slower than he could, so she could keep up with him. Somehow, that made the snail-pace climb even more frustrating. "Don't worry Shel, we'll be there soon. In fact." He peered down. His face lit up and with an alarming pace, he shot down, completely forgetting Shelley's speed, or lack thereof. "Edgar! Edgar, wait up!" She cursed at the ropes, as though it would make her go faster. She could hear Edgar's excited laughter echoing up the walls. With a quick, silent prayer Shelley momentarily ignored all safety rules and rushed down as fast she could, which was still not very fast. When she finally reached level ground, she undid her gear and looked around. She was standing in a concave, which seemed even darker than the rest of the cave she had seen thus far. She hoped Rich had changed the batteries in his helmet recently. "Shelley!" She yelped at the sudden voice next to her and shone her light at Edgar, who was grinning from ear to ear. "It's all still here, Shel! Look!" Without warning, he climbed up the walls. Shelley had compared him to a bat many times, and sometimes a swine if she was upset at him, but now he looked most like a spider, with the way he scaled the walls. She understood now why he had taken off his shoes, as his toes gripped ridges she couldn't even see. It made her slightly uneasy. It was still the same Edgar, of course, but there was something...wrong with how he crawled over the walls, a bit over the ceiling, even. She tried to ignore it, but stayed aware that human bodies shouldn't be able to do what Edgar did. He didn't notice her being uncomfortable, and simply pointed excitedly at things he recognized. "Over there, you have a puddle from which I drinked, I mean, drank. That is where the bats sleeped." "Slept." Shelley corrected. Edgar frowned. "Bats can be mean, but they never slapped anyone. They don't even have hands." Shelley decided that her mom could handle the grammar from now on. Edgar stopped dead in his tracks, as though he realized something. "Oooh, I wonder if." Not finishing his thought, he turned around and started climbing to a different part of the wall. Shelley could barely keep up with him with her headlight. She remarked to herself that she hadn't seen him this excited in a very long while. He stopped at a hole in the wall, covered with a stone. He laughed. "I can't believe it, it's still here!" He turned to Shelley, who still stood below. "I keeped a secret stash of food here, none of the bats knew about." He chuckled and pulled the stone out of the hole. Shelley gagged and covered her mouth. Even from a distance, she could smell the rancid smell of whatever had lain there for the few months Edgar had been gone. He quickly covered the hole back up. "... I'm afraid it's slightly over date." He forgot all about his ruined food, as he saw something that made him smile again. He scrambled to another hole, and began jamming his feet up to his knees into it. "The others were always over there," with one hand, he gestured vaguely at the ceiling, "but I couldn't get my foots...feet to hold on so long. So, I went like..." He let go off the wall and hang upside-down, his legs still squeezed into the hole, preventing him from falling down. "...this." Shelley clutched her heart and tried to breathe normally. She could almost feel the grey hairs forming on her scalp, seeing him hanging, head down, 10 feet above the rocks. "Why didn't you just sleep lying down?!" Edgar snickered, as though that was the silliest question he had ever heard. He pulled himself up and freed his legs. "Anyway, what else should I..." Again, he didn't finish his sentence, but he climbed down until he was standing on the ground. Shelley could not describe how relieved it made her to see him without risk of fatally falling. He held out his hand. "Come, I want to show you something."

They had been spelunking for a good forty-five minutes, and Shelley wondered if Edgar was really just taking revenge for the car ride. She crawled behind him through an extremely small, claustrophobic maze of corridors on her hands and knees. Despite her shoes and gloves, Shelley could feel blisters start to grow. How could Edgar navigate these unforgiving rocks so quickly? She tried to imagine him as a child, living in the dark. Would he have been hurt by the stones? Or was this seeming immunity to sharp edges something he was born with? She hoped so. Just as she thought that, the passageway opened up to a conclave. It was enormous, and it reminded Shelley of the Gothic cathedral she and her parents had visited once when she was a child. That building could have easily fit in this space twice. Stalactites and stalagmites decorated the place, playing with her headlight to make ominous shadows. She opened her mouth to say something to Edgar, but then she heard it. He was singing. Well, it didn't sound like any song Shelley knew. It was composed of vowels without clear rhythm, the melody slid up and down seemingly at random, but he was singing, alright. And then she discovered what made this room so special. Edgar's voice echoed back to him, distorted and amplified by the irregular walls. He singing interacted with the echoes, mingling together until it was like he was singing with a thousand voices at once. He was harmonizing with himself. It was the most abnormal, yet beautiful thing Shelley had ever heard. Only when Edgar stopped, did she realize she had held her breath. "That was awesome." She said truthfully. Edgar grinned at the compliment. "I used to sit here every moment I could. Had to kill the time somehow." He looked around. "Gosh, I didn't realize how much I missed this place!" he pointed to somewhere in the abyss. "You know, if you look over there, you can see..." He stopped. "Shelley? Could you please turn off your headlight?" "What? Why?" She looked where Edgar had pointed, but couldn't see anything weird. Yet Edgar's face had suddenly turned grim. "Just turn it off, please." Shelley absolutely did not want to turn her light off, but something in Edgar's voice convinced her. She put out the light and couldn't help but gasp at the surprising darkness. She had been in the dark before, but this was unlike anything she had seen, or rather, not seen. The black was so intense that it almost became tangible. She felt Edgar tense up next to her. His breathing sounded different. It sounded nervous. "This...this isn't right." His voice had raised in pitch, a thing he always did when he was upset. She heard him start to pace back and forth. "What's wrong?" she asked. He didn't answer her, but his breathing accelerated. "Edgar, what is wrong?" "This isn't my cave." His voice was so soft she was certain she had misheard him. "What?" "This isn't my cave!" He had stopped pacing, but his voice had become strained, as though he was on the edge of crying. "My cave wasn't this dark, I know that. I thought your light was messing with my eyes, but now I notice how dark it is. I used to see all the way back, but now I can barely see 10 feet ahead of me!" Shelley tried to comfort him. "You can still farther than I." "That's not the point!" He started to pace again. "And it so cold, Shel. I had no trouble sleeping here in the winter. Now it's summer, I'm wearing clothes, and look!" He held out his arm, forgetting that Shelley couldn't see a thing. "I have goosebumps! That wouldn't happen in my cave." He swallowed, but the lump in his throat didn't go away. "But everything is just how I left it, so then it must be my cave, but changed." "Edgar..." "Yes, that must be it! It's the same cave, but it must have gotten darker and colder." "Edgar, listen..." "But the question is: how? How can a..." "Edgar!" He finally stopped. Shelley couldn't see him, but felt him looking at her. She spoke quietly, in an attempt to soften the blow. "Maybe it isn't the cave that has changed." "Wh-what do you mean?" She knew he knew very well what she meant, but simply didn't want it to be true. "Maybe you are the one who's changed." She heard him took a breath to disagree, but he couldn't. It was true. Shelley turned the headlight on again, and saw Edgar looking around as though the cave would magically change back into the place he grew up. But it didn't. Not because the cave was irreversibly different. Because he was. Tears started to well up in his eyes. "I... I can't ever go back, can I?" Shelley frowned. "Why would you want to?" "I don't." But the way he said it made it sound more like a question than a statement. Edgar sat down on the ground, leaning against a stalagmite. Shelley walked towards him and sat next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "It's just..." he tried to explain. "If this whole being-human thing doesn't work out or the townsfolk reject me, I thought I could go back. I always thought if I didn't fit perfectly in the human world, I at least had one place I'm at home. But." His voice cracked and he brought a hand to his face. "But I can't ever go back! How could I? How could I live in darkness, now I know what light looks like? I know now what it is like to be warm, to be full, to have people who care about you." He rested his head on his knees, hiding his face. "You don't know what you miss, 'till you have it." Shelley didn't really know what to say to him. What could she say? "Sorry I brought you here and hurled you into an extensional crisis." Instead, she gently rubbed his back, like her mother used to do when she was little. "Sometimes I wish I hadn't been found." She stopped rubbing in surprise. Edgar's head was still resting on his knees, making his voice sound muffled. "I wouldn't know what I had missed. I wouldn't know I was a freak of nature. I wouldn't know cold and warm, dark and light. I wouldn't know happiness, And I wouldn't know sadness. " Shelley finally knew what to say. "You wouldn't know me." No response. She sniffed, feeling tears creep up. "You're right, you know. Maybe it would have been easier if you had stayed here, singing to yourself. But then I would have never met you. I'd have to miss the way you laugh when you finally understand something difficult. I'd have to miss your constant surprise at everything, your scary good memory, how you always try your best, even if it's hard. How you completely freaked out when I first turned on the radio, because you thought people were trapped inside." Edgar couldn't help but chuckle at the memory. "All these things, I would miss. And even though I wouldn't know I'd miss them, I still would. If you stayed here, that'd be the saddest thing ever. I would be devastated, even if I didn't know it. So I'm glad they dragged you up. I suppose that makes me selfish." Edgar looked up. His eyes were red and puffy, but his mouth was softly smiling. "No, it doesn't. I think of all the things I wouldn't know, I would miss you the most." Shelley returned his smile at that and drew him into a hug. She felt him tense up a little. Another thing he would have to get used to. But soon, he relaxed and hugged her back. They sat there for a while, simply being grateful for the fact that they didn't have to miss each other. Shelley caught a glance of the dials on her watch, and cursed wholeheartedly. She jumped up. "Okay, it has been lovely, but we really need to get home!" Edgar quickly got up, as well. "I thought you said misses and doctor Parker wouldn't be back for a few hours?" "Yeah, I lied. We'll make it, if we leave 5 minutes ago. Come on, hurry up!"

Edgar was lying on the backseat again. He heard Shelley mutter under her breath. The car shook as it shot over bumps in the road, almost like it was rocking him. He closed his eyes. He could get used to this.


End file.
